6000 - Consumer Protection

(1) Organized crime is interstate and international in character.
Its activities involve many billions of dollars each year. It is
directly responsible for murders, willful injuries to person and
property, corruption of officials, and terrorization of countless
citizens. A substantial part of the income of organized crime is
generated by extortionate credit transactions.

(2) Extortionate credit transactions are characterized by the
use, or the express or implicit threat of the use, of violence or other
criminal means to cause harm to person, reputation, or property as a
means of enforcing repayment. Among the factors which have rendered
past efforts at prosecution almost wholly ineffective has been the
existence of exclusionary rules of evidence stricter than necessary for
the protection of constitutional rights.

(3) Extortionate credit transactions are carried on to a
substantial extent in interstate and foreign commerce and through the
means and instrumentalities of such commerce. Even where extortionate
credit transactions are purely intrastate in character, they
nevertheless directly affect interstate and foreign commerce.

(4) Extortionate credit transactions directly impair the
effectiveness and frustrate the purposes of the laws enacted by the
Congress on the subject of bankruptcies.

(b) On the basis of the findings stated in subsection (a) of this
section, the Congress determines that the provisions of chapter 42 of
title 18 of the United States Code are necessary and proper for the
purpose of carrying into execution the powers of Congress to regulate
commerce and to establish uniform and effective laws on the subject of
bankruptcy.

[Source: Section 203 of title II of the Act of May 29,
1968 (Pub. L. No. 90-321; 82 Stat. 162), effective May 29, 1968; as
repealed by section 109(b) of title I of the Act of December 21, 1982
(Pub. L. No. 97-375; 96 Stat. 1820), effective December 21,
1982]